Free Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series) by Sara Reinke Page B

fledgling Wraith? You wound me, sister.” Sitri raised his other hand to the back of Jason’s head, and after a moment of tugging, Jason felt the mask abruptly loosen against his skin. Sitri pulled it away from him, and the air against his sweat-dampened skin was frigid and shocking. With it came the bit in his mouth, and Jason gasped for breath, his jaw aching and stiff from having had his teeth wedged against the metal plate for so long.
    “After all, Mara,” Sitri said, “no matter how self-appointed a post it may be, you are the matriarch of us.” He seized Jason by the crown of his hair, jerking his head back while simultaneously revealing his forehead. “And as such, I thought you’d like to be the first among us in all of history to ride the cock of a righteous man.”
    Jason didn’t know what this meant or what Sitri had shown the throng, but all at once, a chorus of startled and aghast cries rose in place of the snickering and laughter. People scrambled from their seats, men and women clambering and floundering over top of one another as they crowded around Sitri, staring up at Jason in wide-eyed, gaping wonder.
    “He’s unmarked,” Jason heard them gasping aloud, words he’d hear again from Nemamiah, words that made no sense to him but overlapped in a breathless, awestruck din. “He’s unmarked…the soul of the righteous.”
    He’s unmarked!
    “But then again…” Sitri crouched down behind Jason so that he could purr directly into his ear. As he did, Jason felt his hand slip between his buttocks, smearing something greasy—putrefied fat from the pig carcass—against his skin. “Maybe I’ll take him myself.”
    No, Jason thought in alarm, realizing what he meant, feeling the obscene press of Sitri’s arousal slide suddenly, suggestively along the cleft of his ass. No, no, he thought as Sitri pushed him forward, face-first onto the table, and God, he struggled to move, to fight back, to break that damnable paralysis that left him vulnerably exposed and helpless.
    No, no, goddamn you, please, no!he screamed in his mind, searing pain ripping through him as Sitri shoved into his rectum. The cavernous hall erupted with shrieking cheers and applause, the table beneath them shuddering as Sitri’s fellows beat against it, urging him on, matching his brisk, brutal, merciless rhythm.
    ****
    “ No! ”Jason jerked himself awake, sitting upright in bed, his body glossed in sweat, his eyes wide. It took him a long moment, looking wildly about the room, before he was able to convince himself that it had been all in his mind.
    Not real, not real, not real, he told himself over and over, clapping his hands over his face. God help me, it was just a dream. It wasn’t real.
    By this point, sunlight was seeping through the blinds. He could smell the warm, earthy aroma of coffee and heard occasional muffled scrapes and clatters from downstairs in the bar area. He pushed the blankets away from his legs and sucked in a pained gasp as the movement hurt his injured shoulder. Clapping his hand gingerly over his bandaged wound, he stumbled to his feet and went to the window.
    Outside, he saw a pair of commercial trucks parked on the street below, one for an electrical contractor and the other for an HVAC service. It was bright and somewhat hazy, as the last vestiges of the city’s customary early-morning fog burned off, creeping back in reluctant misty tentacles to the sea. With it, so too did his lingering unease, the disturbing memories of his dream lifted.
    It was all in my head, he told himself again. Just bad dreams, that’s all. I’m awake now, safe now. It’s broad daylight outside and I’m home again. Whatever happened to me, wherever I’ve been…nothing else matters but that.
    Glancing down, he noticed something dark staining his fingertips, ink on his forefingers and thumb. I’ll go in there right now, take his prints, Bear had said last night, in a conversation so impossible for Jason to have